In short, I encountered so much resistance to what I did that I didn’t even know it was possible to attempt change without facing resistance. When everybody resists you, difficulty comes not only in doing the exercises, but also in dealing with the fact that your family, friends, teachers, and even neighbors oppose your efforts. Still, I persisted.
Figure 1.4. With these glasses I was able to read the largest letter on the eye chart from a distance of five feet (20/800).
Within three months, I was able to see print. And not with 38 diopters, which is a microscopical lens, but with 20 diopters, which is simply a very thick lens. Headaches that had plagued me all my life disappeared within six months.
Seeing the Light
Within a year of practicing the Bates Method, I was able to see regular letters. I’ll never forget the day I was doing the sunning exercise on a roof and looking at sharp black letters printed on white paper. I placed the paper at the tip of my nose. For the very first time in my life, at the age of seventeen and a half, I could see the printed word without magnification. This success took such a huge effort that I threw up. Again, I sunned and palmed and threw up, until I saw another letter, then another. Soon, I heard loud voices in argument. It was the neighbors downstairs accusing each other of creating a mess on the windows. I hadn’t realized that each time I threw up, it was over their windows. So I went downstairs and told them what had happened. Instead of being angry with me, they were amazed at my honesty. I could have ignored my deeds, but I didn’t. I was proud of the fact that I could finally see a letter. I honed my process and, within three months, could see multiple letters by putting the print right in front of my nose.
From then on, I continued to work. People were surprised that instead of just feeling my way down the road, I could literally see the road. Instead of not recognizing them, I started to know their faces. One neighbor was actually upset that I could recognize her! “What is wrong?” she would ask. “You’re the blind person in the neighborhood. How can you see us? What have you done? What’s going on?” It was amazing. I had taken away from her the feeling of security that resulted from her knowing what was going on in the neighborhood. It was almost as if she felt that the world she knew had been taken away from her. Here is the blind kid looking at everyone and actually seeing them. I was used to resistance but was pleasantly surprised by the first voices of admiration I received.
My diligence continued. I looked from detail to detail. People finally accepted that I could see and recognize them, so my status soon changed from being one who was nearly blind to one who was nearly sighted. I kept working despite the fact that my progress was slow.
A landmark came when Jacob, my friend and mentor on the path to vision improvement, told me I no longer had astigmatism. Don’t ask me how he knew, but when I went to the ophthalmologist in the public clinic, she was shocked. She said to me, “I don’t know how it happened, but you don’t need the cylinders in your glasses to correct your astigmatism because you don’t have astigmatism anymore!” I was not surprised to hear this.
It was at this time that I was taught the connection between the health of my eyes and that of the rest of my physical body. Another friend, Miriam, the librarian, taught me a series of exercises to improve my body. I began to practice movement techniques and learned that movement is life. Whenever circumstances block possibilities of improvement, there are always other possibilities that can help you to move forward. I learned from experience that the human body is capable of improving and healing itself. We forget that we have the potential to improve our vision. The world is so engaged in the myth that poor eyesight cannot improve, especially in a case like mine, that it is difficult to imagine a story like mine being true. I’ve proven the conventional wisdom wrong and have shown the power of healing exercises.
I am grateful that Miriam and Jacob taught me eye exercises and body movement and encouraged me to share these exercises with other people. I have met with people who have improved their body even from major conditions such as paralysis from polio, motor neuron disease, muscular dystrophy, spinal injuries, arthritis, strokes, and many other ailments.
Figure 1.5. We forget that we have the potential to improve our vision.
I knew I had found my calling: to bring this consciousness to others. Most people have little faith in their own healing ability. My faith in their ability is great because of my faith in my own ability and my success.
There are two ways for me to describe how you can improve. One is to explain that the body has a greater functional potential than most people ever experience in life. The other is to demonstrate how to meet that potential through exercise. Whenever I work with people, I demonstrate to them that they can do more than they think. When they have pain, this means helping them not to let the pain restrict them too much. When they have tension, it means first helping them recognize the tension to its fullest extent, then decreasing it.
My own process was not smooth. My eyes used to move involuntarily three hundred times per minute until I learned palming: rubbing my hands, putting them around my eye orbits very gently, and visualizing darkness. This would calm and relax my eyes. In one strange way, it actually helped me to have deaf parents in my teens. I could play loud rock and roll music, and relax with it. In spite of our thin walls, my parents couldn’t hear it! Whenever I played this music, I would place my hands very gently around my eye orbits to relax my eyes. The movement of my eyes decreased to sixty movements per minute within three months. That’s when my vision started to clear. The additional exercise of sunning warmed my eyes and started to activate my irregular pupils.
Although I could not exactly see, I gradually learned to look, even though it was sometimes painful. I had been taught by my Braille teacher to “feel the Braille and not look at the page. For God’s sake, don’t look, because if you look, you’ll confuse your senses. You’ve got to feel and not look.” That order was so vigorous that I had learned to live a life without looking at anything. Looking was a new order to my brain. The result, even though I was starting to see more, was that my eyes hurt. Palming and lying down for a long time had helped me. Sometimes I just didn’t want to see anything; it was just too much. But I kept looking.
Figure 1.6. My eyes used to move involuntarily three hundred times per minute until I learned palming.
When I arrived in the United States, I met some people who were very interested in my work. They offered to help me train other people in my methods. It was new to me to have people embrace my experiences. I learned how to teach individuals—Miriam always taught me to work only with individuals—and how to teach classes in a way that would enable each individual to learn how to work with himself or herself. From this I learned that the greatest difficulty most people have is that they don’t believe they can find the time to work on themselves. Most people think they are too busy. Others feel impatient and aren’t willing to invest the effort it takes to quiet and to relax their minds and bodies. I teach them how to incorporate these exercises into their existing routines. I teach them that looking at details is something they had stopped being motivated to do a long time ago and that to do so stimulates the macula—the central part of the retina—and can prevent macular degeneration. I teach them that sitting with a loose neck is worth the investment of moving the head in a rotating motion before sitting in a chair. I teach people that while they use their computers, they should look far away from time to time to rest their eyes. These are simple habits that are easily incorporated into day-to-day life.
My own two children were born with cataracts, which was traumatic for me and for their mother, as we knew from experience the struggle they would face. At the age of two weeks, they went through cataract surgeries that allowed the visual brain to develop normally. This was not known in my generation. Because their surgeries were successful, they did not have to deal with the scarring that I dealt with when I was young. Using the techniques you will read about in this book, their vision has
improved tremendously. Throughout their childhood and adolescence, my children have covered their strong eyes and looked with their weak eyes at objects in order to ease the strain of looking with the strong eyes all the time.
With an artist’s mind and an artist’s heart, my son is often in his own world in many ways. While in his world, however, he looks at details with great interest. Because of his powerful capacity of observation and love of detail, he sees much that others don’t see. He has developed the best vision of any kid who was ever born with cataracts. He now sees at 20/40 without glasses. This is 80 percent of 20/20 vision, without his natural lenses. Anyone else without the natural lens of the eye would be seeing 20/400 (5 percent of normal vision). He sees 20/15 with glasses. Most other kids who were born with cataracts and had successful surgeries see 20/80 or 20/100 using much thicker lenses; 20/40 is unheard of for someone who has no natural lens of his own.
My daughter has also passed through many transitions. We used to play a lot of games in our living room, where she would cover her strong eye and play ball with me using her weaker eye. Seeing that ball as it rolled close and far made a huge difference for her, and her vision greatly improved. At the age of twelve, she developed elevated eye pressure. Immediately, the doctors wanted to give her eye drops to reduce her pressure. We declined the doctors’ recommendation because we believed the drops could be damaging. I worked with her instead, and in spite of incredibly demanding middle school and high school schedules with many extracurricular activities, she found some time to work on her periphery, which reduced eye pressure. She also found some time to work on her neck. She saw acupuncturists and homeopathic specialists, took vitamin treatments, and got massage treatments to reduce the tension in her back and neck. I taught her how to relax her whole body in many different ways in order to bring more blood circulation to her head. Her pressure was reduced enormously.
The process was long, hard, and cumbersome, and had its ups and downs, but it worked. With high pressure, some people have a tendency toward developing glaucoma, and glaucoma expresses itself by damaging the optic nerve and diminishing the field of vision. So our success with her is partial but good; her vision is 20/20. Though her tendency is for high pressure, her optic nerve is very healthy, and her field of vision is excellent.
From these experiences with myself, with my children, and with thousands of patients and students with whom I have worked, I have come to truly believe that people can improve their vision and find the time to do so, whether they’re in school or in the workplace.
A wonderful computer engineer, who once came to a class of mine, was able to improve his vision from 20/200 to 20/80 during the class. He reduced his prescription by half within eight months, from 7 diopters to 3.5 diopters. For the first time in his adult life, and still in his forties, he felt comfortable driving without glasses.
We all can take the time. We just have to decide that we are worth the time and that the process is worth our while. We need to make an effort to combine eye exercises with our everyday lives. Then we can thrive. Then we can excel. Imagine never needing to have any major treatments from the eye doctor. Imagine your life without cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma, or retinal detachment. Imagine that you can improve your life simply by creating more life in your eyes.
So far, the oldest person I’ve worked with was 101 years old. This patient experienced great changes and was able to see better and to improve his brain and eye functions quite a bit, even after just one session. Since he was one of only two patients over the age of a hundred with whom I have worked, I can only give these examples. I did, however, have success with both of them. I have also worked with several patients in their eighties and nineties and have witnessed tremendous positive changes in their visual systems through working with these exercises.
There is no doubt in my mind that, whether you are in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, or beyond, you can change the function of your eyes. There is enough elasticity in your brain to back it up. The problem isn’t age itself, but whether or not a person is practicing the correct exercises for his or her age. It may be easier for a five-year-old child to get used to the weaker eye’s workings by putting on a patch for four or eight hours a day as he or she plays. And truly, the brain has more plasticity when you’re five than when you’re seventy-five. But there are good, age-appropriate exercises you can do at anytime in your life that can change your visual system completely.
Chapter 2
Ten Steps to Better Vision
If you take care of your vision, not only will you see better, but you will also feel better, and you will positively affect your whole body’s health. In addition to the exercises aimed at combating specific disorders and conditions, I have developed ten important steps that are perfect for incorporating into your daily life. These exercises are based on my seven principles of healthy vision:
1. Deep relaxation
2. Adjusting to light frequencies
3. Looking at details
4. Looking into the distance
5. Expanding your periphery
6. Balanced use of the two eyes
7. Body and eye coordination
These are the essential principles of healthy vision, and they can be attained by consistently practicing the eye exercises in this chapter.
Step 1: The Long Swing
I will never forget when I met Alan. He was a young French-Canadian banker who, while driving home after a meeting in his bank, fell asleep at the wheel and found himself in intensive care three days later. By the time he woke up, they had replaced his forehead with platinum. He had lost all his vision. The optic nerve in his left eye was destroyed, in addition to most of the optic nerve in his right eye. But that little bit of nerve tissue remained, so Alan discovered that he still had some visual sensation.
The physicians thought that only 4 percent of his potentially functional nerve was not enough to regain any vision. Alan heard about my book The Handbook of Self Healing. In it, I suggest that people who are legally blind start working with blinking lights in a dark room. Alan experimented with the techniques in the book, and, sure enough, the little bit of remaining optic nerve woke up. He called me in San Francisco and soon came out for a series of therapy sessions. Alan’s girlfriend held his hand to walk him into the office because he couldn’t see most objects. His brain did not yet know how to use that little bit of remaining healthy nerve tissue in his right eye.
During our first session we practiced an exercise called the long swing. As he did this exercise, he said, “I’m noticing twelve objects that I’ve never noticed before in the room.” Within minutes, his sense of orientation built up even more. When the series of sessions finished, he no longer needed to be led around. The long swing is what is called an integrative exercise. It allowed Alan to perceive a sense of space.
The long swing exercise develops a sense of fluidity and flexibility that will allow you to look at details with more ease, to adapt to light easier, and to adapt to new, livelier visual habits.
How to Do the Long Swing
Stand with your legs slightly more than hip-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Hold your index finger about one foot in front of your face, pointing up to the ceiling. Look at your finger with a soft gaze. If you are legally blind, or even with correction have very poor vision, you can look at your index and middle fingers together. While looking at your finger(s), swing your body from side to side. As you swing to the right, twist your body so that your left heel rises slightly off the ground. As you twist your body to the left, your right heel raises slightly off the ground. If your hand becomes tired, you can switch hands. Do this at least twenty times.
You will notice the sensation that everything in the background seems to be moving in the opposite direction of your finger, like scenery passing by you as you look out the window of a train. Allow yourself to feel the sense of relaxation that comes when you don’t need to place a hard focu
s on any one object. Move to the right, and the world moves to the left. Move to the left, and the world moves to the right.
Figure 2.1. (a) Long swing, front view; keep your eye on your finger. (b) Long swing, right profile. (c) Long swing, left profile view.
Now hold your finger horizontally in front of your face. Move your finger up and down in front of you, moving your head vertically along with your finger. Remember to continue to hold a soft gaze. When you move up, everything in the background seems to be moving down. When you move down, everything seems to be moving up.
Next, hold your finger in front of you and do the long swing, pointing your finger to the ceiling as in the first explanation, but this time as you swing to one side, bend at the waist and sweep down in a half circle—just to knee level. Don’t lower your head below your knees, but continue the swing until your arm is fully extended and you are looking up at your finger. This exercise should relax your eyes further.
The next step is very important. This is where we visualize the long swing. We close our eyes and do the movement with our bodies, and visualize in our mind’s eye that the world is swinging back and forth, passing in front of our eyes. Everything you visualize is moving directly opposite. When you move to the right, the neighborhood moves to the left. When you move to the left, the whole world moves to the right. Remember how you saw objects this way. Now you open your eyes and continue the exercise.
When you look in this way, you stop yourself from freezing. It becomes easier to look at details and much easier to blink. Remind yourself to blink. Blinking will help you to relax.
When I started to work on my own vision, my eyes had a constant nystagmus, which is an involuntary rapid movement of the eyes caused by continuous strain from trying to see the world with a total lack of success. So I practiced the long swing for about forty minutes a day, and it immediately eased the involuntary flutter of my eyes. I had a feeling of more light entering my eyes. Details started to appear in the background, and when I started to look at details like windows and books on shelves, they gradually became clearer and clearer to me. Long swinging prepared my brain for new exercises.
Vision for Life Page 3
